Community Corner

Opinon: Carlucci Should Treat Disease, Not Symptom

Reader calls for government to keep doctors in New York

To the editor:

We applaud Senator Carlucci’s call for greater efficiency in multimillion dollar Doctors Across New York program, a program designed to lure doctors back to New York (“,” May 17). However, the Senator’s reform fails to tackle the major underlying issue, namely, why are doctors leaving New York and why are millions of dollars earmarked to lure them here left unspent?

The answer is largely the medical liability climate in New York. In 2010, New York doctors spent $1.65 billion in liability insurance premiums, more than in any other state in the country. The next highest was California, where doctors spent $820m – far less, even in a state with a far greater population. 

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These liability costs scare away new doctors, no matter how much taxpayer money we spend to lure them here. Doctors in New York spend hundreds of millions more in insurance premiums each year than they would in any other state, so it is no wonder that the just over ten million dollars in the Doctors Across New York program goes unused.

Unless we reform our medical liability climate, New York will continue to lose doctors, driving up medical costs for all of us and limiting our access to medical care.  The New York legislature needs to change the legal discovery practices, require plaintiffs to disclose their expert witnesses in a timely manner, enact standards for those expert witnesses and enact reasonable liability limits as 30 states have done.

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Without medical liability reform, we will continue to lose doctors.  We applaud Senator Carlucci for treating a symptom, but it is time we treat the disease.

 

Thomas B. Stebbins

Executive Director

Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York


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